home / Benefits Management : Everything You Need to Know
A measurable improvement resulting from an outcome that is perceived as an advantage by one or more stakeholders.
It is an outcome of actions, behaviors, products, services, or results that provide value to the sponsoring organization as well as the project’s intended beneficiaries.
Benefits management deals with identifying, defining, planning, achieving, and pursuing business benefits and company goals. A business advantage can be material or immaterial. It expresses itself in increased sales and market share in addition to winning customer satisfaction. Therefore, you can consider interest as the expected outcome of an investment, portfolio, program, project, initiative, or change. That requires that the benefit be quantifiable adding value to stakeholder perception. The opposite of utility is non-utility, which is a deterioration that stakeholders see as detrimental to the company’s goals.
In fact, benefits management is investing time and resources manner of to bring about positive change in the project. You can achieve this by identifying, planning, measuring, and tracking benefits from inception to completion of the project.
Additionally, benefits management involves specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time-bound benefits. Also, these benefits can apply to organizational change, process, project benefits or strategy planning. All of these definitions respond to a need for alignment of project outcomes and business strategies.
It explains what the benefits of the project are and how and when they’ll be delivered. The plan does this by including the following.
● Describing what the benefit is
● Creating a schedule for when the benefit will be delivered
● Identifying who owns the benefits
● Defining the metric used to measure the benefit and what the baseline will be
● Listing the assumptions and risks associated with achieving the benefit
How to Create a Benefits Management Plan?
The following steps are common to creating most benefits management plans:
Stage 1: Identify Benefits
Assuming we’ve defined our benefits management strategy. So , the first stage in the benefits management process is to describe the benefits we’re looking for (Identify Benefits) and the actions required to achieve them. Changing the process, implementing new systems, or modifications to existing software systems are all possible activities.
Stage 2: Plan Benefits Realisation
Once we have identified the benefits, we are after the next step of creating our benefits realization plan. The benefits realization plan gives a complete view of all the benefits we delivered and takes the form of a schedule defining when you will realize each benefit.
There are a many items the Benefits Realisation Plan should contain:
● Assumptions, risks and tasks needed to reach those potential benefits.
● Each benefit need to have a metric to measure the outcome in order to track it and make sure as the project is being executed it aligns with the plan.
● Define the roles and responsibilities of those who manage the benefits.
● Add a plan for taking care of benefits which continue after the close of the project.
● Develop a reporting plan to communicate the status of the project to stakeholders, either through regular reports, meetings or face-to-face conferences.
Stage 3: Execute Benefits Plan
It begins at the initiate of the program but usually continues after the program. The Program Management Office (PMO) must monitor any gains made after the program’s completion but not managed by them. Any operational component of the company has to deal with this during the implementation of the program. Delays, unforeseen circumstances, or even unforeseen additional possibilities may lead to reconsideration of the benefits realization plan (Phase 2).
Stage 4: Review / Evaluate
This stage is related to reviewing progress, successes and evaluating the project performance after its completion to ensure that the benefits continue after its completion.
Audits should schedule during Phase 2. (Benefit Realization Plan).
Review stage is significant because it allows us to update senior management and stakeholders on the status of benefits realization and determine whether any additional benefits are feasible. Such step may prompt us to review stage 2 and rework the Benefits Realization Plan once more.
Stage 5: Identify Further Benefits
At any stage in the program we may identify further benefits (stage 5). These benefits need to be properly defined, planned, executed, and monitored.
In Conclusion
Consider benefits management as the link between successful project delivery and change management. That is, the goal of benefits management is to guarantee that benefits drive change management. This is how you can get the most out of your project investment.
The SPM® team will allow you to take control of your projects, become more efficient and have insight into projects that we didn’t have in the past. SPM® will assist you in developing ways to meet your unique business needs.
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